The town of Marshall in Fauquier County Virginia has water troubles as does other parts of the county. Recently drilled water wells in Marshall have either been low-yielding or had contamination that made the water unusable for human consumption forcing the service district to take three of their seven wells out of service. The Marshall wells were contaminated with radium, iron and manganese (all natural contaminants in parts of Virginia), volatile organic compounds (solvents), and e coli bacteria.
Fauquier County is organized on a “service district” model with public water and sewer provided in the nine urbanized areas of the County while the remainder of the County is semi-rural and agricultural with private supply groundwater wells and septic. Marshall located north of Route 66 is the northern most of the service districts. Fauquier County relies solely on groundwater for the County’s water needs- the public water supply is drawn from ground water wells.
The County’s comprehensive plan adopted in 1992 contemplated a mixed system of groundwater and surface water impoundments. The plan designated 9 separate reservoirs that would provide more than 24 million gallons of water per day in the nine service districts. However, after building only the combined Warrenton Lake and Airlie Reservoir the county Board of Supervisors determined that the county would rely solely on groundwater for their drinking water needs. The Warrenton Lake and Airlie Reservoir can provide 2.0 million gallons a day of water.
The nine service districts are spread across the County’s 651 square miles and in one of the County’s three geological provinces, the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium, the Culpeper Basin and the Piedmont Province. Each province has a separate propensity for groundwater retention. Most of the county groundwater is in fractured flow systems. The water availability is highly variable from one location to another in a fractured flow system and these systems have a high degree of susceptibility to surface water contamination. A contaminant can catch a fracture and be carried to the groundwater. These fractured flow systems are strongly influenced by surface conditions that can affect their recharge and contamination and thus have a high probability of changing over time. According to the U.S. Geological Survey fractured flow groundwater systems are challenging to understand and costly to manage.
Groundwater supply wells in the Marshall, Bealeton and Warrenton Service Districts have seen man-made contamination requiring millions of dollars in remediation efforts to continue to use the wells. In addition, there are water supply problems. During the earthquake of 2011 one public water supply well in the County’s Bealeton Service District lost ½ of its capacity due to a shift in the subsurface geology.
In Marshall the current drinking water capacity is no adequate. Currently, the communities four wells produce 0.217 million gallons per day. The water needs for the service district if all the land were developed to its current zoning would be 0.764 million gallons per day. However, if the current land use plans were all built out the water demand would be 1.268 million gallons a day –six times the current water capacity.
Based on total current and future groundwater use, the available recharge through rain and snow melt and potential threats to groundwater quality from contamination, Fauquier has identified a need for a groundwater management, protection and monitoring program and some immediate water supply solutions to ensure the availability, quality and sustainability of water to all Fauquier residents. This winter the service authority in Marshall is connecting a recently drilled well outside the town limits on an old farm. This well will produce up to 0.18 million gallons a day and will help alleviate the current water crisis.
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